HOWDY, DOCTORS

Grey's Anatomy spins off in Texas with new rural medical drama

Showrunner Meg Marinis poses with actor Kevin McKidd, who recently exited Grey's Anatomy after more than a decade playing Dr. Owen Hunt.

Photo via Meg Marinis/Instagram

ABC is bringing the Grey's Anatomy universe to Texas with a new one-hour rural medical drama co-created by longtime showrunner Meg Marinis. Marinis was born in Houston and is an alum of both the Kinkaid School and the University of Texas at Austin.

According to an exclusive report from Deadline, which production company Shondaland shared on social media, the untitled series has received a straight-to-series order from ABC and will follow a team at a rural West Texas medical center described as “the last chance for care before miles of nowhere.”

The series marks the first Grey’s Anatomy franchise show set outside the West Coast, and it's the first that's not centered around an existing main character from the original series.

The new drama will be co-created by Shonda Rhimes and Marinis, who has spent nearly two decades working on Grey’s Anatomy. She joined the series during its third season as a production assistant before rising through the ranks to become a researcher, writer, executive producer, and now showrunner.

"This opportunity will bring new characters and stories to life that will embody the same heart, emotion, and connection audiences have loved from Grey’s for more than two decades, all set in my home state of Texas,” Marinis said in a statement announcing the series. "I am so grateful to Shonda Rhimes for creating this dynamic world and feel so fortunate that I get to be a part of it.”

Marinis’ path to running one of television’s biggest franchises started in Austin. In an interview with Shondaland last year, she recounted moving to Los Angeles during her final semester at UT through the university’s UTLA entertainment program, which allows students to complete coursework while interning in the industry. While finishing school, she interned at Universal before landing a production assistant role on Grey’s Anatomy in 2006.

Marinis has also woven Texas experiences into the flagship series itself in recent years. According to Deadline, she personally knew families affected by the Camp Mystic tragedy and rewrote part of a recent Grey’s Anatomy episode after becoming emotional while working on the script.

The West Texas setting is particularly timely, as rural healthcare access remains a growing issue across the state. According to the Texas Hospital Association, more than 20 rural Texas hospitals have closed since 2010, while roughly a quarter of the state’s remaining rural hospitals are considered at risk of closure.

By centering the new series on what ABC describes as “the last chance for care before miles of nowhere,” the franchise could bring national attention to healthcare access challenges facing communities across West Texas and other rural parts of the state.

The new series joins a long lineage of Texas-set television dramas, though not all were actually filmed in the state. Grey’s Anatomy itself is famously set in Seattle while primarily filmed in the Los Angeles area. Friday Night Lights became closely associated with Austin through extensive local filming, while series like Dallas often recreated Texas from California sound stages, with exteriors of Southfork Ranch serving as the Ewings' fictitious home. Walker, Texas Ranger, meanwhile, became one of the best-known examples of a network drama heavily filmed across Texas itself.

Even after more than 20 years on the air, Grey’s Anatomy remains one of television’s most durable franchises. According to ABC, the drama is now the longest-running primetime medical drama in television history and continues to rank among the network’s strongest scripted performers.

Ellen Pompeo, who stars as Dr. Meredith Grey in the original series, is attached as an executive producer, and the new drama is expected to premiere in 2027.

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GRIT AND GRACE

Archival project captures the chaos behind Austin's Red River district

Jay Ybarra

Local singer-songwriter Bartly during Free Week 2026, the Red River Cultural District's donation-based winter music festival.

Austin's Red River Cultural District (RRCD) is launching a new multimedia archive project documenting more than a century of nightlife, music, and cultural history along one of downtown's most contested entertainment corridors.

Whether it was the jazz musicians, punks, or city programs that had the most impact over the years, the new project tracks as many of the diverse details as it can — and it's still seeking Austinites' firsthand stories to expand it.

Called Cultural Currents, the initiative includes a digital StoryMap, self-guided walking tour, archival photography collection, oral histories, community storytelling project, and forthcoming podcast series. They're all focused on the constantly evolving stretch of Red River Street that helped shape Austin's punk, indie, metal, queer nightlife, comedy, and live music scenes.

The walking tour highlights a mix of longtime institutions, nightlife landmarks, and historic sites across the district, including Stubb's Bar-B-Q, Flamingo Cantina, Mohawk Austin, Cheer Up Charlies, Swan Dive, Chess Club, Elysium, Barbarella, The 13th Floor, the German-Texan Heritage Society, and the former site of the original Emo's.

Cultural Currents arrives after decades of public debates surrounding Red River's future as downtown Austin rapidly transformed around it. Stories over the years have highlighted tensions involving condo development, hotel expansion, noise complaints, redevelopment pressure, venue preservation, and the growing collision between Austin's underground culture and its tourism economy.

The district repeatedly reinvented itself and persisted through those fights. The original Emo's became a defining anchor of Austin's punk and indie scenes. Venues such as Red 7 closed and later reemerged in new forms like Sidewinder as operators struggled to survive redevelopment pressure and rising costs. The back story of Cheer Up Charlie's has had many chapters. And, as recently as last week, the dive bar Valhalla was listed for sale.

Red River District The Mohawk was once the Night Train, a restaurant, and also the Quorum Club, a private club for lawmakers. Photo courtesy of the Austin History Center.

What was once a rough-edged nightlife strip that some locals nicknamed “Crack Alley” gradually evolved into one of the city's densest cultural ecosystems, packed with music venues, dive bars, goth nights, comedy spaces, drag performances, late-night hangouts, and independent creative communities operating within a few downtown blocks.

The late music journalist Michael Corcoran wrote a Substack post on the rough-and-tumble history of the street. For decades, Red River's cultural life thrived partly because it was unpredictable, inexpensive, lightly regulated, and a little grimy. Corcoran describes a decade-by-decade evolution of private clubs, dance clubs, and eventually a music mecca anchored by Emo's.

That 1990s version of Red River is captured in A Curious Mix of People: The Underground Scene of '90s Austin, Curious Mix of People: The Underground Scene of '90s Austin, an oral history by Greg Beets and Richard Whymark documenting Austin's DIY music culture through clubs such as Emo's and Liberty Lunch. A documentary tied to the project screened Saturday, May 16, in the Red River district alongside the launch of Cultural Currents.

The Red River community has had to reckon with the area's historically unpolished, independent identity and the growing city efforts designed to preserve it. Beginning in the 2010s, city-backed cultural district initiatives, preservation efforts, tourism branding, and streetscape improvements increasingly reshaped the area as Austin attempted to protect one of its most recognizable nightlife districts while downtown redevelopment accelerated around it. Eventually, a cultural district was created.

Red River District The former One Knite club at 801 Red River, photographed in 1971, years before the site became home to Stubb’s Bar-B-Q and one of Austin’s most iconic live music venue.Photo courtsy of the Austin History Center

Today, the Red River Cultural District supports more than 1,000 jobs annually across music, tourism, hospitality, and food service industries. Its flagship events, Free Week and Hot Summer Nights, provided paid opportunities to more than 1,040 artists and musicians in 2025 alone, according to the organization's 2025 annual report.

Cultural Currents leans directly into Red River's constant reinvention. The project encourages Austinites to contribute their own memories, photographs, and stories connected to the district, including favorite venue memories, important people tied to Red River, and personal recollections tied to the area's evolving nightlife culture.

red river cultural district red river live music concerts venues history